


nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

by owedbetter



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26397817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owedbetter/pseuds/owedbetter
Summary: The moon has a duty to the sea.
Relationships: Katara/Yue (Avatar)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 99





	nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ilovekatara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilovekatara/gifts).



> This piece was requested. Yuetara rights!
> 
> Thanks for the coffee, Aino!

“ _(i do not know what it is about you that closes  
and opens;only something in me understands  
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)  
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands_”

\- excerpt from “ _somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond_ ” by e.e. cummings

* * *

She has known cold air all her life. All rain was snow. She’d met the most merciless of blizzards before she ever knew how to walk. She’d met them and said hello, time and time again; each time was colder than the last. But the cold was never a problem to a girl who was born with the world’s oceans in her veins. Water was always unrelenting, no matter how still the surface might be.

Katara had always been steady. But today, her hands shook.

“Your lines are all jagged,” said Sokka.

Her brother watched her whittle from behind. Beside her little desk were a pile of dozens of ruined, worn-down blades, made too dull to sharpen again. She was almost finished.

“Not helping,” she muttered.

“I’m just saying—you could’ve just used bone for the damn thing like the rest of us but no, you _had_ to be special.”

“Because I’m not like the rest of you, am I?” she snapped.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m still on your team.” A pause. Her new blade met the stone again. “You know, there’s plenty of people who aren’t going to be happy about this.”

“None of those people matter,” she whispered.

“Yeah, I know, I get it,” he said. “But they matter to her.”

“I thought you weren’t trying to talk me out of this,” she told him, rolling her eyes and turning her head to look at her older brother. She blinked at him.

“I’m not,” he said with a shrug. “But there are things you don’t think of when you’re emotional—and you _get_ emotional, Katara. It’s part of who you are.”

“We’ll get there when we get there,” she said, turning her back again to her project. Her hands were tired. Skin peeled off at the tips and they kept getting small cuts that were simply too tiresome to heal over and over again. She had been doing this for the last three days—since Sokka came to pick her up to go back home.

“Your package from the Fire Nation came in,” he said. He placed the cloth-wrapped package beside her workstation. “Finest blue silk the Fire Lord can find.”

“Thanks,” she said. Quiet and restrained.

“You nervous?”

“Weren’t you?”

“It was different with me,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Marrying Suki broke no rules.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But I _am_ rooting for you.”

Katara smiled up at her brother and shivered. Her arms shook. Everything about her felt weak.

“What time do we leave?”

“Just before moonrise,” he said. “When the winter sky is at its darkest.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Will she?”

She sighed and blew atop her finished project, dust scattering all over her desk. In her hands was a pendant made of moonstone, carved carefully. Laboriously. Passionately. The only one of its kind. She nodded at her work and clutched it tightly in her hands.

Katara exhaled sharply and said, “I guess we’ll find out.”

* * *

The moon has a duty.

Where the sun might have her favorites, favouring to bless lands with longer days and others cursed with longer nights, the moon remained constant in her turns. Every moonrise and moonset, though she could not compete with the light of her sister, she still rose and fell every day and night, even when her borrowed light made no difference.

She was cherished most of all in the lands forgotten by her sister, the sun. Lands where instead of flowers blooming, ice rose—sharp, unforgiving, and cold. That is what it meant to have a duty.

And the moon has a duty to the sea.

Yue watched the koi fish before her swim in an endless circle. It was dark here, just a few hours more before moonrise, but the stars were plenty enough. She watched the fish in their endless dance, part of her envious and part of her lulled.

The princess kept her hands wrapped around herself beneath the sleeves of her dress and she sighed.

The boats would leave come moonrise. The new master having finished all she needed to know up here so that she may bring it down to her people, to the sister tribe of the north, and rebuild. She knew that those boats meant more than goodbye. This new master had note delivered to her, asking her to meet here. Yue felt her heart in her chest, weak but _fast_.

She could do this. Just as the moon—she knew what she had to do.

When Katara came through the opening, Yue smiled and greeted her as she would anyone else. Her chest tightened as she tried to draw breath. The warm air here always tasted so different. Like it was heavier, for some reason. Maybe it was just her.

“Master Katara,” she greeted with a low bow of her head.

“You know there’s no need for that,” she said. Yue chuckled.

“Of course there is,” she said. “The first female waterbending master in the Northern Water Tribe demands respect. It is a great honour.” Her voice was quiet, quieter than usual, as she spoke. As she continued, her next words caught in her throat. Without meaning to, her voice broke. “Have you come to say goodbye?”

“Yue—” Katara started but she turned away at the sound of her name. The princess will not let her see her cry and already, a tear fell from her lost eyes.

“It has been… such a joy to have had you in our tribe for so long,” she tried to say but she has never been good at duplicity. Her voice, her whole body, shook.

She gripped her own arms tighter. She faced Katara and kept her posture steady. When she spoke, Yue spoke with a resolve she did not have. A script she’d memorised but never wanted. She spoke swiftly. “Perhaps one day, when Hahn is chief and we are married, I might visit you in our sister tribe in the south.”

Katara approached her slowly. Cautiously. Like she were a wounded, lost animal that the waterbender was trying to tame. Yue hated it.

“You don’t have to marry him,” she said.

“It has been promised that I would,” Yue replied.

“Not by you.”

“We have talked about this before,” she said. “I cannot do what you want of me.”

“It’s never been about what I want and you know that,” said Katara, more strongly now. Yue flinched when Katara tried to draw nearer. Yue grit her teeth and looked away with a whimper. “You know that, Yue— _look at me._ ”

“Please, don’t do this,” she whispered. “Please, knowing you have to leave tomorrow is hard enough.”

“You can come with me,” said Katara. Pleading. A pause. When Yue looked away, she saw the pendant in Katara’s hand. Her breath hitched. “You can be with me.”

“Katara—” she whispered, eyes wide. Breath, stolen.

“I know what I ask, Yue.”

“It is _forbidden_ —”

“Not in the south.”

“You are asking to abandon my people,” she said, stepping back.

“I am asking you to free yourself from expectations these people have set on you!” she said, stepping closer with the pendant wrapped in fine blue silk in her hand. “You don’t _deserve_ to be miserable in a loveless marriage with a pompous, obnoxious brat for the rest of your life!”

“And you—you are so knowledgeable about what it is I do and don’t deserve?” she asked. “Go ahead and tell me what it is you think my life should be and you will be none better than the elders you so claim to despise.”

“Is it so wrong to want you to be happy?” Katara asked. “To want you to have a life you choose?”

“I have a duty. That _means_ something to me,” she said. Yue felt goosebumps on her skin and she forced herself to step back, near the water’s edge. “My duty prevails over myself and my desires.”

“You have a duty to yourself,” said Katara. “You were given life to live it, not just to give it up for something else.”

“But you would have me give it to _you_.”

“No,” Katara said quickly, tears in her eyes as she pleaded with her. “I would have you share mine with me.” Yue could only stare with her mouth agape. Katara stepped closer to her, almost no space between them now. “I can’t claim to deserve you. I don’t know if I do. And I can’t say for certain that I can make you happy. But I can promise to try. Every day. For the rest of my life, if you’d have me.”

“Katara…” Yue tried to say.

Katara shut her eyes and her hand.

“I asked you a question,” she said. “And you said no.”

“Katara—”

The waterbender threw the moonstone pendant to the water. It disturbed the fish but for a moment and they kept on swimming in a circle.

“I don’t need to be told twice.”

“Please—”

“Goodbye, Princess.”

* * *

The faintest blue light crept over this northern horizon. The night sky was painted in the only green and violet that could be seen for miles and miles. Sokka and the others were loading the boats with food that will last them until they reach Kyoshi Island, where they might restock until they made it back to the Southern Water Tribe.

It was a long journey—one she had hoped she would not have to make alone.

Katara sighed and dropped her bags at her brother’s feet. One look at her face, with no princess beside her, told Sokka all he needed to know.

“Everything all packed?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Katara, I’m sorry,” he said. Sokka took his sister in his arms and held her in a tight embrace.

“It’s fine,” she said, hugging him back. “I’ll be fine.”

“Is she really not coming?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Sokka held her just a little bit tighter, then she felt him chuckle. He released her, hands on her shoulders, and he smirked.

“Are you sure about that?” he asked and cocked his head so she would look behind her.

Katara turned around and saw new light, bright hair glowing above a body that ran towards her. Before she could process what was going on, Yue was finally with arms wide open and she threw her arms around her and locked her in an embrace.

“Yue,” she whispered, half-smiling, but part of her unwilling to hope again. She separated herself from the princess’ embrace and shook her head. Katara wiped tears from her eyes and said, “Don’t—don’t make me say goodbye twice.”

“You don’t have to,” said Yue, tucking her dark hair behind her ears, hold her face in her hands. Katara could only stare in disbelief, too shocked to even draw breath, and only found it again when her lips touched hers in a kiss she’d only kept in secret for so long now. And for the first time, in this land covered in ice, did she feel warm again.

Yue kissed her and she finally felt still. Steady. Strong.

“I will go with you,” said the princess, revealing the moonstone she now wore beneath her coat.

Katara grinned.

* * *

The boats had been gone for hours now as the moon began to set again for the night. Arnook knew that his daughter had become good friends with the new master and felt that he must give her some space. Still, no one had seen her in a while and she had not joined them for supper.

He checked his daughter’s room and found a note on her bed. He sat on her bed, unfurled the note, and found the gaudy pendant that Hahn had made for his daughter. He read.

> _Father,_
> 
> _The moon has a duty. This is what you have always taught me. As it gave me life at a time when it was almost lost, I am bound to the same promise in gratitude. And as the moon is promised to the sea, I go where she goes._
> 
> _As long as she’ll have me._
> 
> _I’m sorry you have to break your promise. But you wanted me to live. For the first time, I finally know what that really means and what it feels like._
> 
> _Know that I love you, Father. We will see each other again._

Tears fell from his eyes as he clutched the note in his hands. Arnook smiled.

“Be happy, my child,” he whispered to the wind. “You are home.”

The moon began to disappear from the sky for the night and he sighed, knowing that he will see it and her again.


End file.
